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Altering Atmospheres What newly-graduated high school students plan on for their future in a dangerously weakened economy
By Sam Fitzpatrick
The past four years have certainly been challenging; things such as the economy on a continuous downfall, jobs running scarcer and scarcer, and retirement funds running on empty. This is especially true for young adults and teens that are about to enter the real world. But only in the past twelve months have things taken a turn for the worse. The U.S.A has seen times like these before and pulled out strong, but this time things just cant seem to look up. Currently we have a total of 82,996,652 teens and kids recently graduated as of 2008 and 2009, with the remainder undergraduates. What is awaiting them in the world with the current economic crisis? There are millions of graduates ready to enter the real world with hardly any job opportunities or enough money to push them through college. Community college capacities are skyrocketing, and the workforce can’t accept much more in the time being. So just what do the recently graduated teens think of this mess? Heritage High School graduates of 2009 such as Brianne Curtis and Alex Perez both agreed that the weakened economy has damaged their career paths. “I wanted to be an elementary school English teacher,” states Curtis, “But I needed to find a better career path -speech language therapy. The teaching job would not have paid enough to support myself”. Perez adds, “I’m going into heating and cooling at Delta College, but hopefully the economy will be better so I can get into my career and start a living.” College has certainly been an issue lately. As if college alone was not enough to worry about before the economy took a wrong turn. “I was originally going to attend CMU in the fall, but I couldn’t allocate the funds in time,” says Curtis, “so I am now going to Delta instead”. Yet another 2009 graduate of Heritage High School, Samantha Leszczynski, shares her thoughts on her now changed plans for college. She says, “I was going to go to Davenport University in the fall, but now it cost even more to go - even more for books and everything. I cannot get enough financial aid, it’s just horrible. Now I’m stuck going to Delta”. Perez also adds, “The economy hasn’t affected me personally but it does scare me with my Dad being laid off from GM”. GM also catches the attention of Leszczynski. “GM and Delphi have all those people that lost their jobs and are taking over the opportunity for the teens, because maybe the managers of the jobs are hiring the older people that have lost their jobs. They need a roof over their heads and maybe they think the teens already have that, so it’s not that easy anymore”. Hopefully GM has finally found a break with their recent pullout of bankruptcy, leaving only four brands still under the name: GMC, Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac. Perez and Leszczynski both feel the same - Michigan has been the leading American-made auto industry. And now that they are supposedly back on their feet, it is time to hire the young and willing. Recent graduates understand that the younger generation will not be kicked out and forced to live on their own immediately right after graduation. We still have a roof over our heads, but how are we to become independent without a starter job? The older generations certainly have job experience, but the younger ones need that experience just as much. Some people may not want to go to college and enter the workforce right away, just as thousands of other GM employees did. There is nothing wrong with that, but today that road isn’t as readily available. Leszczynski also adds, “I wanted to be a teacher because I absolutely adore children; but the thing is, four years ago there were plenty of jobs and things to do. Today there simply aren’t that many. Some of the top jobs are in the medical field. And what I want to do now is accounting”. The current economical situation also scares Leszczynski because, “How am I supposed to be able to move out when I get older and be able to support myself? Who knows?” “I hope Obama can clean up Bush’s eight year mess,” adds Cody Leppein, another 2009 graduate of Heritage, “I would keep a job while searching for a teaching career, and if I can’t pay for college, my dreams of being a teacher may just disappear”. Leppein’s advice should be followed - find and keep any job, be a privateer, do pretty much anything legally that will earn you money at this point. Unlike the other graduates listed above, another Heritage graduate of 2009, Zach Bosserdet, has different plans and opinions. “I was always intrigued by the Military, so I enlisted in the Army,” states Bosserdet, “and yes the economical situation we are in has scared me to an extent, but such things have happened before and America always finds a way out”. The Military seems to look promising; with an easy way out of the real world, benefits and GI bills, an education pretty much paid for, no wonder why some people have changed their personal beliefs on the armed forces since the decline of the economy. Is it possible that we may be seeing a giant expanse in the population of military personnel in the coming years? That is, if this secession continues for that long. The youth of America is entering the real world at a very, very unstable and uncertain time. The schooling systems in the country did not prepare us for a time like this - they mainly taught us about past situations. Hopefully whenever we pull out of this, we learn new ways to avoid economic decline and teach how to stop ourselves from creating a new economical downturn. Maybe America will re-learn how to not take everything for granted and once again start saving, and not doing so much spending. And with millions of dollars flowing to educational institutions through property taxes and ‘stimulus’ money, perhaps higher education needs to incorporate practical job and career prospects into their course prospectus and mission statements.
Sam Fitzpatrick is a recent 2009 High School Graduate and ‘Youth Beat’ contributor to ‘The Review’. |
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